


Rising Underneath These Shadows

by GwiYeoWeo



Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, DMC5 special edition, Gen, Post-DMC5, basically that SE trailer scene, v/vergil if you squint super hard, vergil gets stabby with himself and gets good results wow!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-19
Updated: 2020-09-19
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:15:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26548846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GwiYeoWeo/pseuds/GwiYeoWeo
Summary: "I've had enough of this drabble."He draws the Yamato from his chest, slick and fluid like satin and unstained, her blade having leaving her master unharmed though just a bit hollow with what she’s been tasked to separate — to unleash. Vergil raises her, points her fine edge to what remains still of the horde, and at his side, the carved end of a cane rises in the same motion."Pierce them through.”It's been an hour of this boring slaughter-fest, but the demons keep on coming. So Vergil tries out a new parlor trick. The results are tantalizing.(Basically, an indulgent take on that trailer scene where Vergil stabs himself and unleashes V to deliver annihilation on some demons.)
Relationships: Dante & Vergil (Devil May Cry), V & Vergil (Devil May Cry)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 106





	Rising Underneath These Shadows

**Author's Note:**

> that scene okay. it was just  
> /chef's kiss
> 
> i'm still reeling from it, i think lol

This is utterly mundane.

Vergil will admit the first twenty or so minutes were entertaining, the rules simple and easy: destroy and conquer. The ambushes and surprise attacks were nothing new, their presence a siren to the demons foolish enough to test their mettle against the Spardas. The smarter ones took to the shadows and scurried for their lives, but many lacked that sense of preservation to hightail it out of their path as Vergil and Dante trekked through the Underworld. The demons liked to come forth during their brotherly spars, the human likeness in their blood calling out to those hungry enough to ignore the demon half that should have warned them off in the first place.

This time, they managed to attract an endless swarm of petty little Empusas and a small army of Riots — a trivial matter for Dante and Vergil, another game of who could rack up the highest kill count.

But it’s well approaching an hour of this ceaseless hack-and-slash game, and Vergil hisses out in annoyance as he cleanly beheads a lizard with the Yamato and sends a fan of spectral swords to pin another handful of ants into the dirt. He’s not tired, could very well go for another couple of hours, but there’s no challenge to squashing a mound of bugs beneath the heel of his shoe. He is  _ bored, _ the mind-numbing tediousness of it all enough to make him lose count. He knows he’s at least broke a hundred already.

He glances behind him, where Dante guards Vergil’s back and fills in for any blindspots. Dante doesn’t look any happier either; once snarling in glee and throwing quips and teasing remarks at Vergil in annoying little brother fashion, now wearing a tired scowl as he throws his ridiculous hat like a boomerang in a spiral around them, shooting each glowing red marker with Ebony and Ivory and bursting the demons into glittering remnants. 

They retreat into each other, until their shoulders and boots meet, back-to-back, and Dante responds to Vergil’s gaze with his own ‘I’m pretty sick of this’ pinched look. In true twin fashion, they acknowledge the utter drudge of this horde they’re surrounded in through silent looks and unspoken words, but Dante with his habit of always having to comment on something, says, “You lookin’ a little tired there, brother. Getting old, eh? We could just fly off and leave the little buggers behind. That’s an option, y’know.”

Vergil scoffs, unamused. Retreating is never an option, and Dante knows this in the toss-away tone in his proposal, little brother already knowing how ridiculous of an idea it was to even dream of it.

He shoves his shoulder back, pushing Dante behind him and taking up his position, and sweeps a long arc of his blade through the air. A sharp wave of blinding, bright blue cuts through a Riot in mid-air, slicing it down from its leap to land in two halves on either side of Dante and Vergil. Vergil makes a point to step away from most of the gore before it slaps him in the face, even if both of them are filthy and in desperate need of a sulfur pool to soak off in, and Dante takes the brunt of the viscera, a mix of bright red and rotting black adding little to Dante’s own grime and blood-soaked mess.

_ ‘Allow me.’ _

The voice comes before Vergil can open his mouth to shoot back a retort at Dante, and the uninvited interruption gives him pause enough that Dante has to fend off a few nibbly empusas from taking a chunk out of Vergil’s legs. 

Vergil ignores his brother’s concerned look in favor of listening to that little familiar voice in his head. A voice he’s never heard himself, not as an existence whole again, but through near (yet not always so dear) memories that he can’t quite claim as his own. He pins a face to it, features unlike his and with sentiments that he thought he had long discarded until they were returned to him. A voice that belongs to a man he’s never met but has known — and at some point, abhorred and rejected — all his life. 

_ ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be gentle.’ _

Vergil doesn’t doubt it. Doesn’t doubt  _ him. _

Ever since the tender time of childhood, when his home was burned and his life stolen, Vergil could only depend on himself, placing his loyalty and faith in no one else. He survived on his own wits and wiles, clawed his way through survival relying on power and mettle, struck down whatever blocked his path with such self-assuredness that bordered and even crossed into arrogance. He’s… settled, in the short time since his resurrection, having learned from the hard-earned lessons that’s been beaten into him and torn out again just to have them slammed straight back into his heart with the shining lance of a cane. 

He has Dante again, yes, to have at his side, despite not having the obviously-needed talk over all the transgressions between them — a talk they may never have, considering how they both lacked in that area — and Vergil knows he can allow some burden of trust off himself to place into his brother’s hands. 

But if no one else, he knows he can still trust in himself, including  _ all _ parts of himself.

_ ‘You’ve done it before, you can do it again. Better this time, I’m sure.’ _

The corner of his lips briefly flicks into the ghost of an amused smile. He remembers that tone, taunting and goading like he’s done with Nero in a distant past. Of course he’d be on the receiving end of it, a peculiar way of motivation that’s for certain. It’s bait aiming at his pride, he knows, but he succumbs to it anyway.

“I’ve had enough of this drabble.” Vergil takes the Yamato in both of his hands, extends her handle as far from himself and aims her tip at his chest, and similar to Dante’s own fashion, slides her home straight through. She cuts cleanly, smoothly and surgical, and he’s not even surprised at the lack of pain. 

True to V’s words, it’s gentle. It’s like that fateful day all over again, but Vergil knows exactly what he wants and what he’ll get, no longer plagued by vices and madness and that encroaching demise. 

And Dante. Well, Dante just stares at him like he’s about to fly into that same rage upon their reunion in the Qliphoth, but Vergil’s assuring smirk is enough to keep him grounded, enough to make him look  _ dumbfounded. _ It’s not a flattering look, quite idiotic actually, but Vergil feels a sort of vindication from it. 

Though, Dante is probably looking less at him now and more at the ghostly apparition who Vergil can feel behind him. Vergil doesn’t even have a chance to turn when a shockwave of pure, tantalizing power booms at his back, sending flecks of black into the corners of his vision. 

Something shatters above him, less like breaking glass and more of a rupture in the fabric of reality, but that could be the blistering lightning that rains down around them, a veritable storm of ultraviolet and burning magic that arcs through the air and strikes into the ground below. Cracks form underneath his feet where the strikes pierce and travel through the bedrock, leaping up and forward again to fry whatever it touches. Vergil nearly bounces off the ground when something earth-shattering falls and barrels through the atmosphere like a comet, making a nice pool of destruction and squashed corpses out of some demons unfortunate to soften its landing. 

A pool that grows darker and blacker like a lake of the abyss, laps softly past his boots and engulfs the ground in horrific, murky waters. Some of the demons don’t seem to care, more keen on barreling through the destruction to land their sickly little appendages and claws on the half-demon brothers. Bearing sympathy or concern for fallen comrades was never a trait found in the hellborn species anyhow, but it’s almost annoyingly foolish of them to ignore the very obvious deathtrap they’re scrambling through. 

They may not recognize the darkness that slithers underneath, yet Vergil knows it from memories he’s never personally experienced, smiling in soft delight at the promise of slaughter that skims across the surface. 

He draws the Yamato from his chest, slick and fluid like satin and unstained, her blade having leaving her master unharmed though just a bit hollow with what she’s been tasked to separate — to  _ unleash. _ Vergil raises her, points her fine edge to what remains still of the horde, and at his side, the carved end of a cane rises in the same motion. 

"Pierce them through.”

And for the first time, Vergil properly hears  _ his _ voice, even if the words overlap in their shared execution order. It’s deep, dark and melodic. No more pain, no more strain, just savage delight and polished pride dripping from every syllable. 

All at once, like steel ringing across the air, perfect symmetrical spikes erupt from the inky darkness underneath, cleanly avoiding Dante and Vergil while impaling all others. The demons twitch and writhe as they try to cling to their last vestiges of life until they soon still to be put up for display like decaying flowers upon black stalks. They blow away like dandelions, dust to the wind. 

What little opposition remains turns to desolation as a beam of raw energy rages across the field, encircling Dante and Vergil in a deafening roar that would rupture a lesser being’s eardrums. It carves deep into the rocks and ground, leaving a sharp crumbling rift in its wake. Vergil takes a short moment to marvel at the power soaring through the air before tracing it up and back to the black behemoth of a golem not far behind him. Griffon soars above, sending a few extra lightning strikes to sizzle and fry whatever’s left, Shadow not too far off, reconstituted from her black pool back into a stalking panther, flicking her tail like a scythe to cut down the last of the Riots. They fall like wheat to her blade. 

To his side, Vergil finally sees him, for the first time with his own true eyes.

V stands, elegant and poised, a cryptic and knowing smile playing on his lips, no longer leaning on his cane for desperate support but resting a light hand on it nevertheless. He still wears that ridiculous corset-jacket that was once stolen from a hoodlum that lifetime ago, but he looks almost regal. Powerful.

“How the tides have turned,” V says, reading Vergil’s thoughts. It’s not so startling, knowing who V is and what all he bears.

Still, it is ironic, that Vergil would summon that what he had once deemed worthless and pathetic, returned now in glory and splendor. V  _ was _ weak, certainly, a crumbling heap of skin and bones running on borrowed power; now, that power is all his.

Vergil doesn’t respond, partly because it seems ridiculous to talk to himself in such a manner, partly because there’s no point in sharing a conversation with someone who already knows his thoughts. 

V turns on him, eyes a deep green that borders on black, and his gaze levels something  _ dangerous _ . “You don’t realize the precarious situation you’ve put yourself in, do you?” 

Vergil pinches his eyebrows together, not quite grasping this so-called precarious dilemma he’s in, until he finds… He can’t move. His feet are rooted to the ground, as if Shadow has her tendrils wrapped and shackled around his ankles, and he can do naught as V twirls his cane around before aiming the sharp end of it at his chest. He can’t even lift his hand to push it away. 

“Right now,  _ you _ are  _ me.” _ V says, with a hint of something sinister.

Yet despite the danger of what his words imply, Vergil finds nothing to be wary of, because he knows — 

“But I don’t care too much for that. I think I’ve earned my little vacation from the waking world, and I’m afraid you’ve given dear little brother quite the fright.” 

Before Vergil can turn to find Dante, V is upon him with a hand around his waist and his cane pointed against his back, and he pulls him together to lean chest-to-chest.

“But do come find me again,” he says, closing in to whisper against Vergil’s ear. Vergil can feel the wicked grin against his skin, disturbingly warm with the heat of life. “I find myself bored sometimes.”

And, not so gently, Vergil feels the cruel slide of that cane against his back, feels it slot between his vertebrae and tear through his meaty flesh in a quick stab, all the way to the handle, and he knows V meets the other end of it. He almost expects to cough up blood because he wouldn't put it past V to just shove the cane into his lungs or heart on the way through, to  _ especially _ nick a few important arteries along the ride. 

Vergil's vindictive in that way, so why wouldn't V be? He wouldn't blame him, wouldn't even be mad. 

Squeezing his eyes shut at the blinding light that suddenly bursts at the edge of his vision, Vergil feels the hands at his back drift away, the physical sensation of being held and stabbed through blurring into nothingness. Like waking from a hallucination, a dream. 

But Dante startles him into opening his eyes with a rough hand shaking his shoulder, and Vergil sees the mix of panic and relief and turmoil painted all across his brother's face, that usual air of bravado completely done away from him. Behind Dante, he sees the still-sizzling corpses and twitching remains of demons, the ones that haven't disintegrated into nothingness quite yet, and the vestiges of chaos that V left in his summon. Old, rotting hell trees fallen over or burned or  _ melted _ , a fissure almost carving an island around them, the distinct smell of a passing storm — among the other odors of death and rot and carnage — bearing proof of what Vergil would have otherwise likened to a fever dream. 

The throbbing in his chest is gone, as if he wasn’t jabbed through in the first two times, but the heat along his skin still lingers. That, oddly enough, defying his own reason, is the most damning evidence of all, Vergil thinks.

“Hey!” Dante snaps his fingers in front of Vergil’s face before his mind can wander too far again. Vergil resists the urge to bite his fingers off. “Mind telling me what voodoo shit you pulled this time? Please don’t tell me we have to hunt down that gross tentacle monster half of you again.” 

Despite the joke laced in there, Vergil recognizes the veiled distress in Dante’s words, unease hidden in between the letters and notes; little brother trying to be high and mighty when there’s a scared little boy staring wide-eyed behind the guise of a terrifying demon. Vergil’s been there, done that, and he can’t fault Dante — a sentiment he never would have entertained if he didn’t…  _ reconcile _ with his human heart, he knows. 

His soul is quiet, V’s voice is silent, no quips or urges or tugs pulling him any which way, but Vergil can feel the human part of him egging him on to assuage Dante’s fears. Or perhaps that’s just him, in his entirety. He hasn’t had much time to reflect on the renovation done to his heart and mind, not with the current task at hand.

“Just another parlor trick, brother,” Vergil answers, then thinking upon it a beat longer, “Though one that requires more practice.”

_ “You don’t realize the precarious situation you’ve put yourself in, do you?” _ V had said in that time and space exclusive to their soul. Vergil isn’t sure, not completely, but he thinks he has an inkling of what must have happened, recalls how he couldn’t move, like he was the one bound instead of the usual other way around.

“Indulge me. What did you see?” Vergil asks.

“Aside from you stabbing yourself with the Yamato and turning into ol’ Mr. Poetry? Lots of zaps and booms and creepy spikey things.”

So Vergil had disappeared, leaving V in his absence. 

A  _ dangerous _ parlor trick, he thinks. Vergil closes his eyes, uses the darkness behind his eyelids to search for that presence and voice again, but opens his eyes when he comes up bare-handed. Perhaps V’s hiding, hoping to get a rise out of Vergil, or tired from his explosive use. Indeed a dangerous parlor trick, but Vergil’s not one to shy away from a little risk. In time and with more practice, he imagines he could do so much more. 

He turns on his heel to continue down the path they were walking on before the demon horde had come upon them, leaving Dante to trot along behind him and jab more questions at him. 

It begs more investigation, more tests, and as soon as the thought crosses his mind, he feels V stir underneath his skin. 


End file.
